TMF

Game of Thrones.  Best series I've watched, other than Rome.  The books are even better.

Guys, I've actually seen this happen with a Walther P99, shooting Army issue Winchester ammo.  The end result looked much like the above picture.  I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been standing next to the guy on the range when it happened.  Like a good tacticool guy, he was wearing gloves when it happened.  This isn't something that strictly happens to reloaders.

As my platoon sergeant once said when I got engaged, "You never truly know a woman until you meet her in court."

I recently watched this video. It details the casualties during WWII, which was eye opening for me. I had no idea the human toll during the fight between Germany and Russia was so astronomically high. The numbers were apocalyptic. More interesting though was the end of the video, where they compare the data of WWII, and previous wars, against the last several decades of relative peace. It gives some hope that things aren't as bad as are made out to be by doomsday folks and the media. Of course, when looking at the data against history, it makes you nervous about how tentative that peace is. http://m.omeleto.com/219202/

Ha, well where do you think we get so many of our other small arms from? Many of our machine guns, sniper weapons, antitank weapons are foreign made. My first M16 was made by FN.

Yeah, but they still hit like a girl.

  I have little doubt that our small forces in and around Kabul are the only thing keeping the Taliban from consolidating their forces and assaulting the city, the way the Pakistani Taliban did way back in the day.  Right now, they're doing large scale conventional operations in the outlying provinces, such as the one going on right now in Helmand.  I'm not sure how this could have a happy ending either way, but having the ANA continue to play whack-a-mole each time one of these large scale offensives kick off, it keeps the Taliban engaged and incapable of mounting anything against the capital.  Perhaps this back and forth will continue indefinitely, but I can't agree that an abrupt abandonment will be positive for us in the long term.  The answer isn't another surge in US troops either, but the drawdown has forced the economy down to where it will have to survive on its own, and it is greatly reducing the public's acceptance of corrupt government officials.

I never said it was a myth, but the way you indicated was as if this is a common or widespread occurrence, which it is not. The point is, we have very low numbers compared with what they once were, Afghans are the ones conducting offensive operations, and our involvement in this country is not without precedent. The last two countries we pulled out of prior to stabilization were Vietnam and Iraq, and we know how those turned out. However, we stayed in Japan, Germany, S. Korea, Panama, Kuwait, and even still Kosovo. While it's easy to offhandedly say we shouldn't have even on American troop in Afghanistan, that isn't how it works and it shouldn't be. We don't know what the future holds, but I can guarantee that our word and our reputation will proceed us if we prematurely leave a country swinging in the breeze after they begged us to stay. Especially since we invaded it and installed one of the most corrupt governments in modern history with the expectation they would be effective in governing a country with no national identity in some of the most difficult terrain on the planet.

We are fractionally in a lot of countries, and operating in a similar capacity in those countries. It just isn't hot news. There are less than 10k troops in Astan. There is a long list of countries with far more US troops than Astan. Why not ask why we are in those countries? I'm sure there are compelling arguments to remove troops from every country other than the US. There are also compelling arguments to keep them there. It isn't black and white though. I'm curious though, why be so adamant about pulling all troops out of a place with relatively few troops, while not being equally adamant about pulling troops from the 170+ countries they are currently in?

What view would that be and what is your metric? I've been in and out of Afghanistan for a long time running. Whatever is happening now is practically nil compared to this time last year, and is a fraction of a fraction compared to just a few years ago.

I believe that the brains of men and women differ when it comes to certain things, which may have a lot to do with our chemical differences, and this is where the sexes have their own unique flaws and talents. Interrogation, not torture, seems to be one of those talents which women are better suited for (at least based on my observation). Something to do with women being more methodical, less distracted, and better suited for mental warfare. But the things I saw, I could have never been creative enough or twisted enough to come up with them. As with most things, the man solution would have been to achieve their goals with a blunt object.

The only thing hotter would be if she tried to stab me... or successfully stabbed me for that matter. I've also known a few female interrogators. Holy crap they were twisted. On such a level I couldn't possibly put into words.

Probably baby oil. Like hair gel, it's part of the basic uniform.

Women who kill people get a 2-3 pt boost on the scale, generally speaking. I knew one in Iraq who did the kinetic targeting in our battlespace. Though not directly, she's responsible for the deaths of untold numbers of jihadis. If she wanted a JDAM dropped on a house, a JDAM got dropped on a house. I met with her once a week for targeting, and the way she nonchalantly discussed killing insurgents was hot. I can't explain it. Perhaps it was how non emotional she was about it; not celebratory or remorseful. Most dudes will at least talk with a degree of celebratory attitude after taking out a bunch of bad guys. She just treated it like a job, and the lives of these savages were nothing to her. So hot.

Now carrying my G19 will just feel... dirty. Guess I'll have to go exclusive with my 1911.

We did. There aren't combat troops conducting operations anymore. There are more troops in Clarksville than the entire country of Afghanistan.

I haven't seen those guys around in a while.

I guess the lesson I was getting at is if people who don't celebrate Christmas are capable of showing respect, folks who do celebrate Christmas should be inclined to show the same respect towards those that don't. I'm with you on people being overly sensitive, but that goes both ways. While there are idiots who are so easily offended by someone wishing them a merry Christmas, there are idiots who get offended if you wish them happy holidays. The lesson is we should be respectful of anyone's beliefs without looking for an excuse to be offended by them.

I got a text message from a Muslim colleague today wishing me a merry Christmas. My very atheist friend, who is married to a Catholic, posted his pictures of his kids opening presents, and included a merry Christmas to all the rest of us. Crazy that people who aren't Christian can be capable of respecting and acknowledging a celebration which they don't believe in. There is a lesson in there somewhere.

My wife and I did this one Christmas before we had kids. We were traveling just prior to Christmas, and by the time we got back to Clarksville an ice/snow storm had covered everything, and they didn't plow or salt the roads. We didn't have any food in the fridge and all the stores were closed, so we did the Golden Buffet on Ft Campbell Blvd. It's still one of my favorite Christmas memories, although we didn't get the staff to do the "Fara-ra-ra" version of deck the halls.

Yep. In my neighborhood we had a rash of stolen Christmas laser lights recently. People will steal anything that isn't nailed down. Thieves should be executed. They have no place in society.

One particularly boring day in Iraq I decided to shoot a full propane tank with tracer rounds. It didn't explode. I shot it at least a dozen times. So I took another propane tank and put half a block of C4 on it. That made a pretty cool fireball.